At the start of this month I had the great opportunity to go to the CISA dinner/presentation/meet and greet for international students, particularly leaders and members of the international student clubs, at City West. Lenny did a great job of co-ordinating the night and making sure that everyone was getting to know each other, while getting some valuable information about CISA, the organisation and what it does. It was awesome to get to know some of the presidents and members of the various clubs for different groups of international students as well as getting to hear some of the ideas and concerns they wanted to work on to make their Uni SA experience as fun and rewarding as possible.

Hopefully as time goes on we can get more events like this and more events that help facilitate international students and domestic students getting to know one another, which was a key thing that many of the students were wanting. If you are a domestic student, make sure that you are taking the time to chat to some of the international students in your classes, I’m sure they’d appreciate it and you’ll appreciate getting to hang out with some of the top notch international crew that we have at Uni SA.

Other than the CISA dinner it has been a fairly quiet month for me on the board front, as I have once again been long away from uni up at placement in Tailem Bend. I did however go along to a formal inquiry for the business school this month. It is disappointing to see that some students haven’t taken the academic integrity rules as seriously as they should. Going to meetings like this just reminds me once again how important it is to be honest in your referencing and dealings with the university and academia. It is vital for making sure that all the work that is being produced at Uni SA is of a high standard and can be part of the global peer review system, plus it helps students to learn.

As well as these meetings I had some ongoing commitments such as the productive USASA board meeting that we had and my second ever Academic Board. It was really interesting to get an update from the Pro-Vice Chancellor about his meeting with the new Federal Education Minister, Simon Birmingham, and where Minister Birmingham sees universities and university funding going in the future. It is early in the term of the new Minister yet the signs are good that there could at least be more consultation and nuance than has existed previously.

Finally, I just wanted to wish all Uni SA students good luck with their final assignments and upcoming exams. Good luck as well to all the candidates currently in campaigning mode for the elections to be part of the next USASA Board. If the next board is anything like this one you will learn huge amounts, help heaps of students and have an absolute blast.